Texts and Paratexts in a Colonial Context
Krupabai Satthianadhan’s English Novels Saguna and Kamala Karin Edgardh
Master Thesis in Comparative Literature Academic term, year and course: Spring 2019 Course LV 2321
Supervisor: Mats Jansson
Master Thesis in Comparative Literature
Title: Texts and Paratexts in a Colonial Context. Krupabai Satthianadhan’s English Novels Saguna and Kamala Author: Karin Edgardh
Academic term and year: Spring 2019
Department: Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of Gothenburg Supervisor: Mats Jansson
Examiner: Anna Nordenstam
Key words: India; Krupabai Satthianadhan; Saguna; Kamala; Gérard Genette; Autobiography; Conversion;
Colonial literature.
ABSTRACT
The anglophone Indian author Krupabai Satthianadhan (1862-1894) was a second-generation Christian convert and a member of the Christian Tamil family in colonial Madras. Knowledge of English was still a high-caste male privilege when Satthianadhan published reformist articles on female education.
Her two novels, the autobiographical Saguna. A Story of Native Christian Life (1892 and 1895) and the posthumous Kamala. A Story of Hindu Life (1894) included forewords and a “Memoir” written by English ladies in the colony. The forewords were dismissed as ‘colonial missionary patronizing verbiage’ at the postcolonial revival of the author in the 1990s. The main aim of the essay is a paratextual analysis of the forewords according to Gérard Genette’s theories. The authors of the paratexts provide their English readers with a sympathetic portrait of Satthianadhan and her novels are praised for literary style and authenticity, qualities understood as tokens of a successful colonial civilizing mission. Experiences of discrimination and ambivalence concerning the English in Saguna are ignored as the novel is read as praise of the Christian conversion in India. Thus, the interpretation in the paratexts and posthumous “Memoir” of the author overshadows Satthianadhan’s narratives. The forewords’ colonialist discourse including white supremacy provide a historical context to Satthianadhan’s novels, but the “Memoir” is also the only biographical source of the writer’s life and writings. The essay investigates the neglect of Satthianadhan’s novels during the Indian struggle for independence and the revival in the feminist postcolonial anthology Women Writing in India (1991).
In Meenakshi Mukherjee’s indigenous context Satthianadhan is recognized as the first Indian autobiographrer and spiritual writer including female aspects of conversion. A dialogical tension is set up in Satthianadhan’s novels between colonial education and traditional wisdom, and between individual agency and the power of community characterize her works. Satthianadhan’s literary self- representation as a “simple Indian girl” is a contrast to her pioneer authorship.
Key words: India; Krupabai Satthianadhan; Saguna; Kamala; Gérard Genette; Autobiography; Conversion;
Colonial literature.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ... 1
INTRODUCTION ... 4
INDIA’S FIRST LADY NOVELIST ... 4
AIMS ... 5
THEORIES AND METHOD ... 5
MATERIAL ... 6
PREVIOUS RESEARCH ... 7
STRUCTURE OF THE ESSAY ... 10
BACKGROUND ... 10
THE EMPIRE, INDIA AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ... 10
WOMEN’S ISSUES AND EARLY ANGLOPHONE INDIAN WOMEN WRITERS ... 11
THE CITY OF MADRAS AND THE SATTHIANADHAN FAMILY ... 12
KRUPABAI SATTHIANADHAN AND HER WRITINGS ... 12
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS ... 13
SAGUNA. A STORY OF NATIVE CHRISTIAN LIFE ... 14
A Simple Indian Girl ... 14
The Conversion Story ... 15
Native Christian Life and Racial Issues ... 16
Adolescence, Ambivalence and Ambition ... 17
Dreams of Future and Independence ... 17
Dark Days but a Happy End ... 18
BETWEEN SAGUNA AND KAMALA ... 19
KAMALA. A STORY OF HINDU LIFE ... 19
Location of the Novel ... 19
Brahmin Joint Family Life ... 19
Pativrata dharma, the Worship of the Husband ... 20
“Sleep little one, sleep” ... 20
Good Deeds and swarga ... 21
Kamala, the Hindu Novel ... 21
ANALYSIS ... 23
MRS. BENSON AND MRS. GRIGG ... 23
DEDICATIONS ... 24
MRS. BENSON’S FOREWORDS TO SAGUNA ... 24
MRS. GRIGG’S “MEMOIR OF KRUPABAI SATTHIANADHAN” ... 25
Introduction ... 25
Biography. Family Friends ... 26
The True Light, Ancient Vedic Times ... 27
The Movement for Female Education East and West ... 28
Intellectual Efforts. Early Grave... 28
Krupabai Satthiandhan and Toru Dutt ... 29
Biography. Early Chapters and Saguna ... 30
Racial Vocabulary and Discrimination ... 32
Krupabai Satthianadhan and Race Issues ... 33
Biography. The Last Chapters and Kamala ... 34
Concluding Comments ... 36
NOTES FROM THE MEMORIAL MEETING ... 37
THE FINALPART OF KRUPABAI SATTHIANDHAN’S LIFE ... 38
Pundita – a Meeting and a Decision ... 39
A Heavenly Home and a Happy Day ... 40
The Closing Months and Samuel Satthianadhan ... 41
THE HISTORY OF KRUPABAI SATTHIANADHAN’S NOVELS ... 42
PUBLICATION CHRONOLOGY ... 42
SUCCESS, NEGLECT AND REVIVAL ... 42
The Indian English Novel and the Postcolonial Revival ... 43
The 1998 editions of Saguna and Kamala ... 45
Literary Research and Discussion After the 1998 Editions ... 46
Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Novels in the Indigenous Context ... 47
Narrative Structure and Authorial Self-representation ... 49
CONCLUSION ... 50
POSTSCRIPT ... 51
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 52
Electronic sources... 53
APPENDIX ... 55
Social Intercourse Between Europeans and Natives ... 56
Cradle Song in Kamala ... 57
The Memorial Stone ... 58
INTRODUCTION
INDIA’S FIRST LADY NOVELIST
Krupabai Satthianadhan (1862-1894) was a second-generation high-caste Christian convert born in the Bombay Presidency. She received a scholarship for medical studies after missionary school and was admitted to the Medical College in Madras as one of their first female students. She had golden plans for an independent future as a doctor. She was the top of her class after the first year at the college, but she had, however, to give up her studies as she was overworked and depressed and had to reconsider her life values.
In 1881, Krupabai met and married Cambridge-educated Samuel Satthianadhan thereby becoming a member of the Christian Tamil Satthianadhan family in Madras. She was a reformist and recognised the need for female education, began a teaching career and on the side-line published articles and short stories for various magazines under the pen name “An Indian Lady”. Her profession turned out to be to “write from home” as Samuel Satthiandhan was appointed professor of Philosophy at the University of Madras in 1886 and the couple settled in the city. Krupabai Satthianadhan published her autobiographical Saguna. A Story of Native Christian Life serialized in the Madras Christian College Magazine in 1887-88. The novel was a success and was published as a book in 1892. Saguna offered authenticity as compared to writings about Indian women written by English authors. At the time, the reign of Queen Victoria, the education of the “daughters of India” had gained priority and Krupabai Satthianadhan’s anglophone writings were welcomed as a success for the colonial civilising society in Madras. Her narrative style and “painting with words” were considered a token of her assimilation of English poetry.
Sadly, the author suffered from a long-standing illness which would prove fatal. Krupabai Satthianadhan finished her second novel Kamala. A Story of Hindu Life shortly before she ‘fell asleep in Jesus’ on August 3rd, 1894. The first edition of Kamala was thus published posthumously in 1894, while Saguna appeared in a second edition in 1895. Both novels included introductions written by two English ladies in Madras and the memory of the author was honoured at a meeting in the Government’s House.
Krupabai Satthianadhan’s works were neglected during the struggle for independence but were rediscovered by feminist postcolonial literary scholars in the early 1990s. Saguna was recognised as the first autobiography written by an Indian woman writer and furthermore a novel commissioned to the theme of conversion. Yet, the original forewords to Krupabai Satthianadhan’s stories were characterised by the critic Meenakshi Mukherjee as “…patronizing verbiage of the colonial as well as the missionary variety…”, a statement that caught my interest.1 Reading the original editions of Saguna and Kamala, I found that Krupabai Satthianadhan’s experiences of racial discrimination as well as her ambivalence concerning the English were ignored in the introductions to her novels. My reading became the starting point for this essay, and for my research question: how the original introductory texts to Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels guide the reader into the author’s narratives and
1 Meenakshi Mukherjee, “Ambiguous Discourse: The Novels of Krupa Satthianadhan” in The Perishable Empire. Essays on Indian Writing in English (Oxford UP New Delhi, 2000), p. 71.
also into the colonial context in which her novels were read by the English authors of the introductions. I choose Gerard Genette’s theories for the paratextual analysis of the introductory texts to the original editions of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels.
AIMS
Providing the background for Krupabai Satthianadhan’s authorship and the summaries of her two novels Saguna and Kamala, my main aim is to analyse the original forewords to the novels as paratexts according to the theories of Gérard Genette, i.e. to investigate how the paratexts introduce the readers to the narratives and elucidate the colonial discourse of the time. A further aim is to discuss the publication history and postcolonial revival of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels, her biography, autobiographical writings and literary self-representation.
THEORIES AND METHOD
“Any piece of writing is a product of its time”, Elleke Boehmer claims in the introduction to her book Colonial and Postcolonial Literature.2 Boehmer presents the European influences which disseminated across the world, “wrote the empire” and generated indigenous responses. The term “colonial literature” is used for literature that made imperialism seem part of the order of things, written mostly by colonisers but also by the colonised. Colonialist discourse constituted the systems of cognition with which the Empire founded and guaranteed its colonial authority. “Colonialist literature” is the term for literature specifically concerned with the superiority of European culture according to Boehmer.3
“Postcolonial literature” is defined as that which critically scrutinises the colonial relationship.
Boehmer’s terminology and literary analysis are pertinent to my reading and discussion of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s writings and the introductory paratexts.
The study of English literature was initially advocated in the colonial India in order to elevate the character of its colonised readers and contribute to the loyalty of the Empire. The interpretation of classic works in the old languages Sanskrit and Tamil remained for long the basis of literary criticism in India as mentioned in the postcolonial work by Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin the Empire writes Back. Their introduction to traditional Indian criticism and the debated language question are useful for the historical context of English literary writing in India.4
For the analysis of the introductory texts to Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels, I build on the criteria for paratexts in Gérard Genette’s book Paratexts. Thresholds of interpretation.5 Genette’s definitions of “paratexts” include a variety of texts within a publication, from titles and intertitles, dedications, forewords and afterwords to notes. A foreword marks a threshold to the narrative, from which the author of the foreword addresses the reader with direct performatives. The author of the paratext may be the author of the narrative text, or an “allographic” preface writer. A preface guides the reader both into the text and out towards the historical and social place and time of the narrative. A writer of a
2 Elleke Boehmer, “Introduction” in Colonial & Postcolonial Literature. Migrant Metaphors, 2nd ed. (Oxford UP, 2005).
3 Boehmer, pp. 48-49.
4 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin (eds.), The Empire Writes Back. Theory and practice in post- colonial literatures (Routledge London-New York,1986).
5 Gérard Genette, Seuils [Editions du Seuils, 1987], Paratexts. Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge UP, 1997).
foreword, who has a firmly established position in the literary or social world, may provide support for the book in question.6
A paratext can go beyond its function and turn into a disadvantage of the text. Genette points out that posthumous paratexts should be considered from this point of view. Furthermore, a paratext can disappear from new editions of the narrative for different reasons, e.g. by the wear and tear of time, but can also emerge after an intermittence that is linked to a historical process related to the narrative.
Thus, Genette makes clear that the “historical awareness of the period that saw the birth of a work is rarely a matter of indifference when reading it”, and humbly adds that “his study does not leave the limits of western culture”.7
For aspects of the colonial Christian mission, the Satthianadhan family, caste, conversion and gender I use Eliza Kent’s Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India.8 Estelle Jelinek’s explores women’s early autobiographical writing in The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography, and ascertains a distinctive tradition which differs remarkably from men’s autobiographical texts in narrative style, content and projected self-image.9 Meenakshi Mukherjee is the chosen guide for indigenous aspects on Krupabai Satthianadhan’s authorship.10
MATERIAL
Unfortunately, the first edition of Saguna a Story of Native Christian Life from 1892, published to acclaim the serialized version of Saguna, is no longer retrievable. 11 I have worked with the earliest available editions of the author’s novels, i.e. the 2nd edition of Saguna. A Story of Native Christian Life (1895) and the first edition of Kamala. A Story of Hindu Life (1894), both published posthumously by “Mrs. Samuel Satthianadhan”.12 Moreover, I include Miscellaneous Writings (1896), a collection of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s articles, short stories and poems edited by Samuel Satthianadhan, published with the author’s full name, Krupabai Satthianadhan, and including two appendices by Samuel. All mentioned works were published by Madras Srinivasa Varadachari & Co.
Three paratexts are part of the 1895 2nd edition of Saguna: A Dedication, a preface followed by the original preface to the first edition, both written by Mrs. Benson. The edition also includes an
6 An example of this kind of supportive allographic prefaces is E. M. Forster’s preface to Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Untouchable a few years after its first publication in 1935, meant to introduce the book to English readers.
7 Genette, p 7.
8 Eliza. F. Kent, Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India (Oxford University, 2004).
9 Estelle C. Jelinek, The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography: From antiquity to the Present. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986).
10 Meenakshi Mukherjee, The Twice Born Fiction (New Delhi, 1971), “Ambiguous Discourse: The Novels of Krupa Satthianadhan” in The Perishable Empire, Essays on Indian Writing in English (Oxford India Paperback, New Delhi, 2000), “The Beginnings of the Indian Novel” in A History of Indian Literature in English, (ed.) Mehrota, Arvind Krishna (London, 2003).
11 Priya Joshi, In Another Country . Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India. (Columbia UP, New York, 2002), pp. 174-77. Joshi has the correct information on how Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels Saguna. A Story of Native Christian Life and Kamala. A Story of Hindu Life were serialized in the Madras Christian College Magazine, Saguna in 1887-88, and Kamala in 1893-1894.The first edition of Saguna as a bound book appeared in 1892.
12 Apart from the print on the covers of the original editions, the only source stating “Mrs. Samuel Satthianadhan” as the author of Saguna is Kent’s Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India, p. 272, note 58, […Saguna: A Story of Native Christian Life” by Mrs. S.
Satthianadhan…].
appendix with “Notes from the Memorial Meeting” from 1895. Kamala includes a Dedication and Mrs. Grigg’s introductory “Memoir of Krupabai Satthianadhan”.
Saguna and Kamala both appeared in reprints and in separate volumes in 1998, edited by Chandani Lokugé and with new subtitles: Saguna. The First Autobiographical Novel in English by an Indian Woman and Kamala. The Story of a Hindu Child-Wife.13 The 1998 editions do not include the original introductory texts to Saguna and Kamala but new ones and a chronology by the editor. No differences have been found comparing text, spelling or punctation between the original 1895 Saguna and the 1998 edition of Saguna. 14 Kamala has the editor’s numbered page references inserted in the original narrative text. The original Madras’ editions of Saguna and Kamala are available only from a few libraries outside the British Library. Therefore, for quotes in this essay, I cite with page numbers from the more accessible 1998 editions.
PREVIOUS RESEARCH
Previous research is presented in chronological order. Meenakshi Mukherjee is a key scholar who investigated how the genre of the English novel was established in India while recognising the Anglo- Indian novel as a true representation of diverse Indian cultures in her Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India.15
The first indication of a postcolonial and feminist valuation of literature concerning the Indo- British encounter is Susie Tharu’s introduction from 1989 to the Bengali poet Toru Dutt (1856- 1877).16 Tharu explored how the imperial presence in India was justified through the ideology of patronising racism relating the Indian experience in accordance with Frantz Fanon’s writings on race and skin colour, on black skin and white masks.17 Moreover, Tharu and her colleague K. Lalita were involved in a feminist undertaking of publishing an anthology of Women Writing in India, from 600 B.C. to the early Twentieth Century.18 Including anglophone authors and translations into English from 13 writers in the vernacular languages the editors had looked for pieces that “illuminated women’s responses to historical developments.” 19 “Krupa” (the name used without the traditional Maharashtra honorary postfix ‘bai’) Satthianadhan” was included with a biography and an excerpt from Saguna.20
13 Krupabai Satthianadhan, Saguna. The First Autobiographical Novel in English by an Indian Woman (in Classic Reissues) and Kamala. A Story of an Indian Child-Wife, Chandani Lokugé (ed.), both in Oxford India Paperbacks (1998).
14 With my supervisor, I have performed a random sample comparison and compared every tenth page of the 1895 edition of Saguna with the 1998 edition. No differences were found regarding the author’s text, spelling or punctation in Saguna. Kamala has the editor’s numbered page references inserted in the original narrative text.
15 Meenakshi Mukherjee, Realism and Reality (Oxford UP,1985).
16 Susie Tharu, “Tracing Savitri’s Pedigree: Victorian Racism and the Image of Women in Indo-Anglian Literature”, in Kumkum Sangari & Sudesh Vaid (eds.) (New Delhi, 1989).
http://savitri.in/library/resources/tale-of-savitri-various-narratives/ballad-of-savitri-toru-dutt, retrieved 2019-04-10.
17 Franz Fanon, Les damnés de la Terre (1961), in English The Wretched of the Earth (1963) and Peau noire, masques blancs (1952) in English Black Skin, White Masks (1967).
18 Susie Tharu, K. Lalita (eds.) Women Writing in India, from 600 B.C. to the Early Twentieth Century, Vol. 1, (Oxford UP, New Delhi,1991).
19 Ibid., Preface, p. xxiv.
20 Ibid., Krupa Satthianadhan, introductory text and excerpt from Saguna, pp. 275-281.
Imperial feminism in Victorian England was investigated by Antoinette Burton.21 Burton explored the appeal to women in Victorian England of taking part in a civilising mission targeting traditions in India. Child marriage, secluded zenana quarters for women to enable them to live in purdah, lack of education and enforced widowhood were issues for the Indian “woman question”.22 Writings from India were popular in “the mother country”, and published in English magazines, e.g. in Woman’s Signal and Englishwoman’s Review.23
The introduction to Krupabai Satthianadhan in Women Writing in India from 1991 kindled an interest in Krupabai Satthianadhan’s writings, but her books were difficult to find in libraries and archives. In 1998, Saguna and Kamala appeared with new titles in the series of Oxford India Paperbacks, Saguna in ‘Classic Reissues’, both novels edited by Chandani Lokugé. The volumes include introductions, chronology, biography and explanatory notes by the editor. 24
Jackson contributed with the history of the Christian Tamil Satthianadhan family in a lecture on
“Caste, Culture and Conversion from the Perspective of an Indian Christian Family based in Madras 1863-1906”.25 Jackson told the story about the influential Satthianadhan family and the reformist Anna Satthianadhan, who was Krupabai’s mother-in-law, and began the lecture with an analysis of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Hindu novel Kamala.
Mukherjee used the 2nd edition of Saguna and the first edition of Kamala for her essay “Ambiguous Discourse: The Novels of Krupa Satthianadhan” in The Perishable Empire. Essays on Indian Writing in English.26 Mukherjee positioned Krupa Satthianadhan’s authorship in three indigenous contexts: an early Indian novelist to be seen in relation to authors writing in other Indian languages, a writer of the first autobiography written for publication in India and also the first author in India who wrote in English about conversion from a woman’s point of view. Mukherjee disliked the “lengthy Forewords, Prefaces and Introductions” (together with excerpts from a number of reviews from journals and magazines) in the early editions of Saguna and Kamala. As mentioned above, Mukherjee chose to
21 Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History. British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (The University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
22 Purdah, female seclusion from the gaze of unseen men and visitors.
23 The Woman’s Signal, feminist English weekly magazine 1894-1899. See also Englishwoman’s Review, one of the first feminist periodicals with women editors, published between 1866-1920.
24 Chandani Lokugé, Ass. Professor in Literary Studies at the Monash University in Australia, in the
“Acknowledgements” in the 1898 editions of Saguna and Kamala, expresses her thanks to the supervisor of her doctoral thesis, (the now late) Dr Syd Harrex, who initiated her “interest in the genesis of Indian women’s English writing”. Furthermore, Lokugé thanks the Flinders University of South Australia for a research fellowship for “this project”. Lokugé’s untitled PhD is from Flinders’ University in 1996, according to Lokugé’s webpage at Monash University. (The full name of the PhD thesis has been found in Ratanbai. A High-Caste Child-Wife by Shevantibai Nikambe, edited by Lokugé in 1993, p. 106. “Between the Idea and Reality: A Study of Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Indian-English Women’s Fiction”, PhD thesis, Flinders University of South Australia, 1993). It would have been useful to have access to Lokugé’s doctoral thesis as a background and sources for the 1998 editions of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels. However, no thesis by Chandani Lokugé has been retrievable, despite direct contacts with Chandani Lokugé and through the University Library in Göteborg with the Flinders University, and with Lokugé’s present affiliation at Monash University in Australia.
25 Eleanor Jackson, “Caste, Culture and Conversion from the Perspective of an Indian Christian Family based in Madras 1863-1906”, paper presented the Third Annual Colloquium on the History of Christian Missions in Asia, University of Derby in 1999. https://www.wmcarey.edu/carey/electronic-books/articles/jackson--caste-culture- conversion.pdf, retrieved 2019-05-09.
26 Mukherjee, “Ambiguous Discourse: The Novels of Krupa Satthianadhan”, pp. 68-88.
dismiss these texts as patronizing, “colonial and missionary”.27 Fortunately, she provided information on the marital status of the two lady authors of the forewords and thus made it possible to trace them.
Mukherjee’s Elusive Terrain. Culture and Literary Memory includes a chapter on “Women and Christianity” with Krupabai (not Krupa) Satthianadhan’s accounts on conversion and her spiritual writing as a new “genre” in India.28
The market for the English novel in India is investigated in the first part of Priya Joshi’s In Another Country. Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel. Joshi continued with the history of the indigenization of the English novel in India, and how Krupa Satthianadhan with her autobiographical Saguna appeared as “The Woman Who Did” write a different story in the colony. Joshi presents the publication years for Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels and points out that most of what is known of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s life comes from the “Memoir” by Elisabeth Grigg in Kamala. 29 Joshi also broadens the perspective of “women’s writings” and the reforming of the novel in the colonial India and in western countries at the end of the 19th century.
In 2003, the author had become recognised, and was included as Krupabai Satthianadhan in the comprehensive A History of Indian Literature in English, edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.30 Including aspects of conversion in South India with a presentation of the Christian Tamil Satthianadhan family, with the founding father W.T. and mother Anna as promoters of female education and a companionate Christian marriage, Elizabet Kent provides close readings of Saguna based on the 1998 edition and “The Story of a Conversion”, Satthianadhan’s short story concerning her father-in-law.31 Literary writings with excerpts by several members of the Satthianadhan family were published by Eunice de Souza in The Satthianadhan Family Album. 32 Choosing Saguna as an introduction of colonial novels to students of literature was successfully performed with Mrs.
Benson’s forewords as an exposure of time, place and ideological assumptions as context for the novel, as described in by Swenson in Teaching a Highly Exceptional text (2005).33
For her work Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920, Ellen Brinks used the 1998 editions of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels with Lokugé’s introduction.34 Brink’s textual analysis of Kamala.
The Story of a Hindu Child-Wife positions the novel in a political perspective of child marriage since it pictures the author as a reformist cross-dressing as a Hindu child-wife.35
Kamala Satthianadhan, Samuel Satthianadhan’s second wife, initiated and edited The Indian Ladies’ Magazine, ‘ILM’, the first journal for Indian ladies and printed in both English and Tamil. The
27 Ibid., pp. 70-71.
28 Ibid., “Women and Christianity” in Elusive Terrain. Culture and Literary Memory. (Oxford UP, New Delhi, 2008).
29 Joshi, pp. 176-177.
30 Mukherjee, “The Beginnings of the Indian Novel in English” in A History of Indian Literature in English, Arvind Krishna Mehrota (ed.), (Hurst & Company, London, 2003), pp. 92-102. “The book covers the literary ground from Rammohan Ray to Arundhati Roy” according to Mukherjee.
31 Ibid., pp. 183, 187-89.
32Eunice de Souza, The Satthianadhan Family Album (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 2005).
33 Kristine Swenson, “Teaching a ‘Highly Exceptional’ Text: Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Saguna and Narratives of Empire” in Teaching Women Writers 1750-1900, Jeanne Moshad & Shannon R. Wooden (eds.), (Peter Lang, New York, 2005), pp. 20-32
34 Ellen Brinks, Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 (Routledge, 2013).
35 Ibid., “Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform in Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life”, in Anglophone Indian Women Writers, pp. 60-90.
first publication period covers 1901-1918. Anna Logan presented the contributions to the magazine and organized the topics into an inventory for the 1901-1918 in her book The Indian Ladie’s Magazine. From Raj to Swaraj.36 “Women’s issues” were most often referred to as “The Woman’s Question”.
STRUCTURE OF THE ESSAY
The starting point is the historical Indian and colonial background to Krupabai Satthianadhan’s life and writings as a second generation convert Indian woman, reformist and author. A description of the Madras city and the Christian Tamil Satthianadhan family is followed by outlines of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s authorship with Miscellaneous Writings and the novels Saguna and Kamala. The author’s novels are the required “texts for the paratexts”, generously summarized as they are not widely read today. The paratextual analysis of Mrs. Benson’s and Mrs. Grigg’s introductions to the novels is an investigation into how Satthianadhan’s novels are introduced in the paratexts, elucidating the colonial discourse of the time, and providing biographical information of Krupabai Satthianadhan.
The notes from the “Memorial Meeting” in 1995 follows, as well as my own commentaries to the author’s very last years and spiritual writings. The final part of the essay covers the history of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels from success to disappearance and a feminist postcolonial Indian revival, a discussion of publication dates, previous research, the 1998 editions of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s novels and finally, the author and her writings in the indigenous context.
BACKGROUND
THE EMPIRE, INDIA AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
India has a great number of vernacular languages, and the ability to master several of them has since long been common – otherwise, India would have been a tower of Babel. In 1857, an important year in Indian history, the “First Indian War of Freedom” broke out. The colonised opposed their colonisers, but the revolt was cruelly suppressed by the English. The colonial power was transferred from the British East India Company to the British Crown. This meant increased commercial exploitation and the British merchant marines spanning the globe. The control of the colony was in focus, along with the creation of an infrastructure and the spread of English education, behaviour and values in India.
Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1876 and was firmly convinced that the function of the Empire was “to protect the poor natives and advance civilization”.37 Colonialism was justified as a duty of the colonisers, based on theories of racial difference, the superiority of the white race and the ranking of cultures. Language studies and anthropology were favoured parts of scientific studies of the time and imperial and evangelical aims converged when missionaries learnt about Indians to evangelize them effectively so that Christianity would prevail throughout the British Empire.38
Knowledge of English was a benefit for upper-class Indian men. Universities were opened in the metropoles: in Calcutta, the capital of British India, as well as Bombay and Madras. English literature
36 Anna Deborah Logan, The Indian Ladies’ Magazine, 1901-1938. From Raj to Swaraj (Lehigh UP, 2017).
37 Michael St John Parker, Queen Victoria, (Pitkin 1992, rpt. 2016), p. 18.
38 Kent, p. 53.
was included in the curricula, in order to create a class of Indian natives who were English in taste and intellect.39 In the latter half of the 19th century, India became a vital market for the import of English books and novels, including light reading from London, an imperial success investigated by Joshi.40 English was not a preferred language for literary recognition in early 19th century India, neither regionally nor nationally. Indian authors wrote in one or several of the many vernaculars, and poetry and short stories were traditional genres. The first novel in English by an Indian author was Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) by the Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.41 It was a realistic presenting view of contemporary Bengali life, serialized but not widely read.42 It was a false start, and Chatterjee went back to write in Bengali, and became an influential author and nationalist.
WOMEN’S ISSUES AND EARLY ANGLOPHONE INDIAN WOMEN WRITERS
“Women’s issues” became an area of imperial reform mission during the Victorian period when, according to Boehmer, the projection of British authority abroad was particularly powerful and far- reaching.43 The issues addressed were foremost conjugal arrangements, child-marriage, the lack of female education and the treatment of widows, i.e. variations on the colonial theme of Hindu patriarchal oppression of women. The plight and burden of the white colonisers were steeped in racial metaphors based on pseudo-scientific social Darwinism.44 Reports from India were covered in Victorian magazines, targeting female readers. The points of contact between British and Indian women were few, and “social intercourse” between Indian and English ladies was seldom an option in the colony.
Strict upper-caste Hindu rules confined women’s lives, and women in general lived under patronising dominance. “The Laws of Manu” written in Sanskrit about 200 BC were the moral code for the integrated domestic, conjugal, social and religious life in high-caste Hindu India.45 According to Manu, the wife is the Brahmin husband’s possession, marriage means the wife’s total obedience with the consequence that widow remarriage is not accepted. Girls should be married off in childhood and raised in the family of the husband. Rules concerning household chores, purity and pollution are intertwined with imperative religious rituals. Brahmin-born Indian Christian converts were excommunicated. The “woman question” was a favourite subject for reformist writers in India with focus on child marriage, conjugal and family relations, female education and health issues.
The founding of the National Congress in 1885 was a milestone in the independence movement, beginning with local governments with small elite groups of ‘educated natives’, ‘natives’ meaning
‘indigenous inhabitants’ in a colonised land and a word without a derogative meaning at the time.46 The last three decades of the 19th century are considered a period of “literary awakening” and cultural
39 Thomas Macauley, “1835 Minute on English Education”, an infamous policy of education, mentioned by Joshi, p.40.
40 Joshi, Part I: “Consuming Fiction” pp. 3-140.
41 Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-1894).
42 Joshi, pp.147-148.
43 Boehmer, pp. 28-32.
44 Burton, pp. 4-5.
45 “The Laws of Manu” were written in Sanskrit about 200 BC by “the first man” Manu, a long and detailed code on caste, moral and Brahmin religious law. Despite its age it has remained paramount in the Hindu caste culture.
46 Boehmer, p. 8. Samuel Satthianadhan wrote about himself in his preface to History of Education in the Madras Presidency (1894) that “ it is the first work of its kind attempted by a native of India”.
nationalism. Krupabai Satthianadhan is one of the first two women writers who pioneered writing in English at the time, both Christians. The other is the Bengal poet Toru Dutt who belonged to the highly cultured Dutt family in Calcutta, a traveller who wrote in both French and English, a novel but mostly poetry, translating ballads in Sanskrit into English and published posthumously. Dutt died of consumption at the age of 21.47 Satthianadhan was recognized for her writings during her lifetime, Dutt was known by very few in India when she died. The two writers never met.
THE CITY OF MADRAS AND THE SATTHIANADHAN FAMILY
The Madras Presidency comprised most of south India. The inhabitants of Madras were Hindu, Muslim and Christian, speaking the old Tamil language and several other vernacular languages. When colonialised, Madras had grown from the first white settlement by the sea, the building of Fort St.
George, developing into a “White Town” and a “Black Town”. The city had a port, a railway station and trams, avenues with impressive colonial Indo-Saracenic architecture with Hindu and Muslim mixed features, selling off European design and comfort. Such buildings included the railway station, the Government House, a university and a library in the “White Town”. The “Black Town” included living quarters, bazaars, bars and brothels, mainly catering to English sailors. A variety of schools were funded, also Anglo-vernacular, and several run by different missionary societies. Colonial documentation and reports on governing and agriculture were produced, along with accounts on severe famines and health issues, not to mention maps, dictionaries and illustrated magazines. Other printed material and new books, also in English, were available. The association with Christianity was age- old, and Madras had numerous churches not only built by colonial powers, as well as various Hindu temples.
The Satthianadhan family held an independent position as a Christian clan in Madras.48 William Thomas, or W. T., Satthianadhan was a multilingual convert Tamil Christian. He was a Reverend in the CMS, Church Missionary Society, with two protestant communities and churches in Madras. His wife Anna belonged to a family of Tamil Christians since several generations. Anna was a zenana teacher and a reformist Tamil and English writer on child education working for the CEZMS, Church of England Zenana Missionary Society.49 The couple spent time in England in the early 1880s, were multilingual and socialized over the gender borders at their home in Madras but refused to change their Indian clothes into European outfits.
Krupabai Khisty moved from the Bombay Presidency to Madras to study medicine when she was 16 and boarded the Christian Tamil Satthianadhan family during her year as a student. She soon met Samuel Satthianadhan, they married in 1891 and lived in Madras from 1896. Samuel was a Cambridge-educated educationalist and writer and was appointed Professor of Logic and Moral Philosophy at the University of Madras in 1886.
KRUPABAI SATTHIANADHAN AND HER WRITINGS
Krupabai Satthianadhan read, wrote and spoke English at a time when knowledge of English in India was a gender benefit for high-caste men. Her ‘first language’ or ‘mother tongue’ is not mentioned by
47 ”The Dutt Family Album” in A History of Indian Literature in English, pp. 65-9.
48 Kent, pp.181-189.
49 Ibid., on Anna Satthianadhan, pp. 145-50.
herself, or by anyone noted in the “previous research” in the essay. She was born in the Maharashtra part of the Bombay Presidency where Marathi was spoken and written, and from her autobiographical Saguna it is clear that she understood Marathi and learnt ‘the Indian name of things’ by her mother. 50 In addition, I assume that she learnt some of the old Tamil language as a member of a Tamil family and by living in the Madras Presidency.
This section includes substantial summaries of Satthianadhan’s novels Saguna and Kamala which are “texts for the paratexts”. Yet, I begin with the collection Miscellaneous Writings, including her sketches, which completes her authorship providing picture of herself, her family life and her view on social issues. She left no diaries or letters.
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS
Krupabai Satthianadhan began her writing career around 1882, publishing short stories and articles in various magazines under the female pen name “An Indian Lady”. Her husband Samuel edited and published the posthumous collection Miscellaneous Writings of Krupabai Satthianadhan in 1886, adding a short preface about the texts indicating where they had been published. For his late wife’s biography, he referred to Mrs. Grigg’s “Memoir” in Kamala.51 The collection includes 11 pages with excerpts from reviews of the author’s “Indian Novels”.52
Miscellaneous Writings include 12 pieces, several articles on women’s issues and education, short stories, personal sketches and a few poems, although not in chronological order. Satthianadhan’s best- known short story,” The Story of a Conversion”, is about the conversion of her late father-in-law W.
T. Satthianadhan. It is a picture of Tamil high-caste village life, with the eldest son – the first in his family to learn English – and his way to conversion. 53 Another piece of spiritual writing is “A fine Sunset of Life”, a recollection of her mother-in-law’s last days.54
“A Visit to the Todas” is one of the last pieces in Miscellaneous Writings but was Satthianadhan’s first published piece, a depiction of the tribal Toda people of the Nilgiri mountains.55 “Female Education” begins with a positive construction of ancient Hindu history. The point was feminist inspiration for enlightenment through the Vedic scriptures. The article includes the opinion that an educated wife is a true domestic blessing for the enlightened man and husband.56 The article was published in the early 1880s in the British Journal of National Indian Association, a journal with its first objective the improvement of education for Indian women. The text ends in a warning against books in the vernacular languages, which are considered vulgar and must not be read by the young. (I assume she had read them.) In “Women’s Influence at Home” the author depicts the educated woman as the incarnation of domestic perfection.57 Enlightened men should give their wives and daughters a liberal education, not for their independence, but to make them fit for their important duties as wives
50 Saguna p. 26.
51 “Memoir of Krupabai Satthianadhan” by Mrs. Elisabeth Grigg, prefixed to Kamala (1894).
52 Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 118-129.
53 Ibid., “The Story of a Conversion”, pp. 34-66.
54 Ibid., “A Fine Sunset of Life”, pp. 67-75.
55 Ibid., “A Visit to the Todas”, pp. 88-91. Published in Ootacmund: South of India Observer press, a periodical that quite possibly had a majority of English readers.
56 Ibid., “Home Training of Children”, pp. 9-16. Published in the Indian Magazine.
57 Ibid., “Women’s Influence at Home”, pp. 1-8. Published in the Journal of National Indian Association later called the Indian Magazine.
and mothers. Furthermore, a well-educated mother is the best teacher, as told in “Home Training of Children”. In “Hindu Social Customs” Satthianadhan states that Hindu joint family customs, including infant marriage and enforced widowhood, are the roots of social evils, and consequently she favours reformative legislation in social matters. “Early and liberal education of our women is very essential:
and this step when once taken, the up-lifting of our females will gradually follow”.58 Krupabai Satthianadhan was a reformist but of the variety that trusted the Empire in matters regarding education. “India is still, as it were, a child and she can by herself accomplish very little and it is our humble opinion that England and India must work together if anything good is to be achieved at all”
she finished her article.59
Satthianadhan once met the well-known Pandita Ramabai at the Widow’s Home in Poona (Pune) and wrote a short piece on the meeting, “Pundita Ramabai and Her Work”.60 She felt sure that Pundita’s initiatives would be part of the emancipation of women in India.
Krupabai suffered from long-term tuberculosis and spent time in the Nilgiris highlands with its healthy air, busy writing her second novel Kamala. The sketch “The Nilgiris” is told by a tired lady on a bench, enjoying the scenery of the mountain heads high in “the land of eternal rest”. In my understanding her conversion stories and these two last sketches are important texts in her writings.
SAGUNA. A STORY OF NATIVE CHRISTIAN LIFE
Krupabai Satthianadhan was encouraged to write more than sketches and articles. She began with memories from her childhood, which developed into the autobiographical Saguna. A Story of Native Christian Life. Her parents’ conversion is an inserted story in the beginning of Saguna, written with a change of her parents’ first names. 61
A Simple Indian Girl
Satthianadhan tells her story through her alter ego Saguna, “a simple Indian girl”. The narrative begins:
In the following pages, I shall in my own way try to present a faithful picture of the experiences and thoughts of a simple Indian girl, whose life has been highly influenced by a new order of things – an order of things which at the present time is spreading its influence on a greater or lesser extent over the whole of her native land.62
In the introductory paragraph, the first-person narrator Saguna distances herself from the subject, and the anglophone narrator becomes “a simple Indian girl”. The narrator thus refers to herself in both the first and third person. Thus, the “simple Indian girl” bridges a cultural gender-gap with her use of
58 Ibid., “Hindu Social Customs”, pp. 25-33.
59 Ibid., p. 33.
60 Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, a scholar and Christian convert feminist and reformist. In 1889 Pandita opened her Sharada Sadan, or “Home for learning” for widows. She is called “Pundita” by Krupabai Satthianadhan
61Krupabai’s parents were the Rev. Haripunt Khisty (1820-1864) and his wife Rhadabai (1826-1892), also called Rhada. The family had 14 children and Krupabai was the next youngest
https://www.geni.com/people/Reverend-Haripunt-David-khisty/6000000023564451450, retrieved 2019-12-10.
62 Saguna, p. 19.
English and the intention to present “a new order of things”, an extraordinary purpose for “a simple Indian girl”.
Saguna’s Christian Brahmin father dies when she is little and leaves her mother Radha with many children. She has a free and happy childhood, her brother Bhasker is her teacher from an early age, making her familiar with English books and poetry. An elder sister tells her siblings “simple Scripture stories she clothed in beautiful imagery of thought and language, so that each scene rose vividly before our infant minds”.63 Summer vacations are spent in a summer house in the mountains of the Deccan plateau, a landscape Saguna and Bhasker explore. “Every grove has its spirit, every stream its nymph or naiad, every dark spot its ghost, and every hill its goddess or ruling deity.”64 A certain cave is the home, the legend says, of a young girl-bride who rushed out of her dead husband’s burning funeral pyre with a shriek. Her ghost has lived in the grove for about one hundred years, with the worst calamities ascribed to her evil powers.65 To pass the grove is frightening, while to leave it behind and meet the sunbeams of Christianity “dispel the darkness of superstition in a land.”66 Bhasker also “told me about great men called poets, who went into raptures over the wonders of nature.”67 He quotes passages from Milton’s Paradise Lost, lines Saguna absorbed but did not quite understand.68In such a morning light, Bhasker turns to Saguna with a serious statement and a question.
He was a Brahmin, he said, a Brahmin to the backbone, and he would show his countrymen what it was to be a real patriot to live and die for one’s land. […] ’And you will help me? Won’t you? You will speak boldly to your countrywomen and yet be as your sister was, modest, gentle, and kind, a real woman?’69
Saguna promises and takes his words to her heart. She does not quite understand his message but never forgets his words, which are often quoted in texts about Saguna but interpreted in two different ways, either as a Christian mission promise or as an expression of nationalism.
The Conversion Story
“Before proceeding further with my story, I think it necessary to give a short sketch of the early history of my parents, with special reference to the spiritual struggles through which they had to pass, before giving up the religion of their ancestors”, Saguna declares when including her parents conversion story in the narrative.70 She is no longer the protagonist, she relates what she has been told by her mother Radha and her eldest sister, thus reconstructing the story of her parents’ conversion while intermingling several narrative voices.
The high caste but poor Radhabai, promised for marriage in her cradle, lives since her childhood with her stern mother-in-law in a joint family according to Hindu rule. Her husband-to-be, Harichandra, is an intelligent young man who, according to tradition, has left home to study Hindu philosophy and holy scriptures, the shastras. The more he learns about the many varieties of
63 Ibid., p. 18.
64 Ibid., p. 23.
65 Ibid., p. 25.
66 Ibid., p. 23.
67 Ibid., p. 23
68 Ibid., p. Paradise Lost, the epical poem by John Milton.
69 Ibid., p. 25.
70 Ibid., pp. 27-69.
Hinduism, the more he thinks it indicates imperfections. When he begins to study the Bible, he experiences a spiritual transformation, a total religious change.71 Reading about St. Paul’s conversion he considers following in his footsteps.
Harichandra has a Christian padre sahib and decides to convert to Christianity, which means total disgrace and excommunication from the Brahmin family. He abducts his child-bride Radha to save her from becoming a widow, despised and not allowed to remarry. His family and hometown are in turmoil. The young couple stays in the Christian sahib padre’s house, a polluted home for Radha who scorns her husband and throws her jewels at his feet to provide him with valuables to let her go. But Harichandra’s decision stands firm, and after a compulsory court trial they are excommunicated and leave for a Christian village.72 Keeping a few idols Radha tries to hold on to traditions for purity by not letting Harichandra have his food in the house. She gradually, however, succumbs to Christianity, released from shame through the love of God she can feel with the help of her husband. Beginning to talk freely together, a taboo in a Brahmin marriage, husband and wife are happy and make a home for themselves and baptize their children.73
Harichandra is ordained and advocates equal rights for Christians and Hindus. As it is, Christians are denied access to water since they are considered polluted. Contrary to the strict caste rules of water distribution Harichandra manages to provide water for his people from certain wells. For Harichandra,
“water was given for all”.74 Infuriated Brahmins threaten to kill him, but he always manages to get home to Radha and the children. Unfortunately, he dies when Saguna is still a child. But she is told that on his death bed her father pointed to the heavenly home up high saying to Radha: “You shall follow me; I will go and wait for you there.”75 The ascension and the meeting of the loved ones in heaven for an instant reunion was part of their Christian faith.
This is the conversion story in Saguna, a spiritual story about Christian faith, excommunication, and the bravery of Harichandra going against caste rules. But it is also about young Radha, who had no choice but to follow her husband in spite of her fear and protest. “Poor girls” is an outcry in the conversion story that echoes through Saguna and develops into the author’s future reformist demand for female education and opposition to the joint family system. Yet, Saguna shares her parents’, Bhasker’s and her sisters’ Christian faith. Her childhood belonging to a Christian minority is an important element of the coming-of-age story in Saguna.
Native Christian Life and Racial Issues
Poor Hindu converts could gather in Christian villages with a missionary leader and a chapel.76 Saguna knows of such a village, she likes the chapel and the church bells and the morning prayer. She knows that native mission agents from the village are given Biblical names as converts, such as Abraham,
71 Kent, pp.4-5, “Decoding Conversion”. In south Indian convert context there was an understanding that the
‘interior dimension’ was for elite converts and the ‘gradual exterior dimension’ for low-caste converts.
72 High caste converts to Christianity were frequently ‘outcasted’, ostracized from their natal family and community. The significance of the conjugal relationship that developed between the author’s parents is a sign of the depth in their new redeemed family, grounded by love for the Christian god is pointed out by Kent (pp. 180- 181).
73 Ibid., pp. 62-63.
74 Ibid., p. 65.
75 Ibid., p. 68.
76 Grigg’s ‘total change’ description appears unrealistic and Krupabai Satthianadhan had experience of the different living conditions of converts, e.g. from Christian villages and Bible women.
